(1) Field of the Invention
This invention regards to an assembly for operating fender elements suitable to protect a boat during the movement or stop.
(2) Description of Related Art
As known, the placing of a craft, such as a ship, a boat or a hull, in the position of docking or mooring, is a manoeuvre rather laborious and however not always easy, especially if in the stop area other crafts or various structures, of which the moving vehicles must come up by the side, are present.
Just think when a boat is docking to the pier or the wharf of a port or, besides, when it must moor near other vessels already at stop, particularly in a specific space between two of them.
The difficulty is primarily determined by the combination of two reasons: the unstable nature of the surface on which the boat moves, which is the water, and the sense of march with which these means are moved in such occasions, almost always the reverse, in order to obtain a replacement on site as correct and efficient as possible.
Therefore, despite the attention taken by the driver in manoeuvring, the moving boat accidentally hits against adjacent bodies, with the obvious problems which this causes for the structural integrity of the one as well as of the others.
Furthermore, in order to limit the negative possibilities just said, the driver carries out slowly or is forced to repeat several times the manoeuvres which, thus, require longer time to be completed and which, moreover, succeed only in sporadic cases or minimally.
The problems associated with the ruinous effects of the accidental collisions are also found in case the boat is completely motionless, already moored or docked.
As a matter of fact, for this situation various types of equipments and components, mostly fenders of the inflatable type or containing spongy or rubber material, which eliminate or greatly limit the damaging effects resulting from the collisions between boats, are currently available on the market. Such elements, sometimes protruding from the wall of the ship sometimes fixed directly to the pier or wharf, lend themselves to offer to the boat a protection against the accidental impacts only in static conditions, namely when it is moored or docked, being not suitable for situations where the same ship is still in motion.
However, the fender elements of the known type have some recognised drawbacks.
The main drawback of the known art comes from the fact that the placing of these protection elements protruding laterally from the boat is somewhat laborious, articulate and extended over time, whether carried out manually by an operator or automatically. A second drawback of the known technique consists in a certain instability of the protection elements while they are still hanging sideways to protect the boat against accidental impacts.
The present invention intends to remedy to the drawbacks of the prior art just listed.
In particular, the primary aim of the invention is to provide an assembly for operating fender elements suitable to protect a boat which allows to reduce, compared to the known equivalent technique, the time needed to place such fender elements in effective and efficient protection of the boat.
It is another aim of the present invention to offer to fender elements of a boat, in conditions of use, a greater stability with respect of known equivalent elements.
A last but not least aim of the invention is to realize an assembly for operating fender elements suitable to protect a boat which lends itself to be in place on use on the boat in any its condition, both during the movement and during the mooring or docking.